Bruce Springsteen - 'Dancing in the Dark'

Bruce Springsteen was a huge American star in the late 70's and the 80's, his music is of the soft, folk rock genre.

This video is a performance video and is stereotypical of most performance videos i have looked at by artists such as, Guns 'N' Roses and Magnetic Man. E.g. there is a stage, a live audience and various shots of the singer and the band throughout.

The opening shots use narrative enigma as there are several shots which are cut just below the head and another from behind so the audience is unsure of who is on the screen. The first shot of the artist's face comes as he begins to sing the lyrics. The sound on the video is not diegetic sound from the performance but the track laid over the video instead.

The artist is wearing a simple and plain outfit, jeans and a white t-shirt, this is signifying that he isn't glamorous just an average American singer/songwriter.

Frequent shots of the crowd are shown throughout, this helps to signify that they are enjoying themselves and therefore promotes the music, the artist and encourages fans to pay to see him live. It also shows off the size of the crowd which signifies his fame.

There are a variety of shots used, including close-ups of the artist, medium shots with the band in the background, long shots with the crowd in the background and shots from the artist's point of view of the crowd, almost every single shot has Bruce Springsteen in, there are only 12 shots in total throughout the entire video in which he doesn't feature. The shots are all cut to the beat.

Towards the end of the video, the artist gets a crowd member up on stage, this is quite an original idea for a performance video. The fact that this crowd member is the actress Courtney Cox however suggests that this was planned out and staged for the video. She also happens to be wearing a 'Bruce Springsteen' t-shirt which again helps to advertise and promote him as an artist.

The fact that this is a performance video for a big star, with a large venue/stage and crowd suggests that this video had a relatively high budget.